


Repose

by anexorcist



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Depression, Drug Use, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anexorcist/pseuds/anexorcist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They forget that Damian is only ten and that they are all only human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repose

**Author's Note:**

> could be one-sided DamiTim if you squint, BruTim if you close your eyes

Alfred and Damian watch Tim scratch through his skin, leaving angry red welts all across his arms and bloody crescent moons where he squeezes his thighs. His cries drown out the bats, echoing through the cave and reverberating in their ears.

In another part of the manor, Dick sweeps Tim’s room and in another part of town, Jason turns his whole apartment over.

_“Just a scratch, it’s just like a scratch, I can’t feel anything at all.”_

They rummage through his things and raid the medicine cabinets and bedside drawers, under mattresses and floor boards, for anything and everything Tim can use (and has been using) - syringes and orange plastic cylinders full of unknown pills, a razor blade and sterilizing equipment, half-empty matchbooks littered everywhere.

Jason finds a small baggie of…  _something_  that he pockets to give to Dick in the cave later, for closer examination.

_“That’s the problem, Timmy.”_

_“You’re_ supposed _to feel something, anything, baby bird.”_

Damian clenches his fists and looks away when a high keening noise rips itself from the back of Drake’s throat, like he knows what his brothers are doing, like he can feel the pull and snap of _losing_ all over again.

Like he’s being forced to relive the stages of  _trust_  then  _disappointment_.

Of  _empty_  then  _full_.

Of  _flying_  then  _falling_.

Of  _building_  then  _breaking_.

Of  _dying_  then being  _ripped back into existence_ , in a world that’s sharp and jagged and ugly and  _all wrong_.

(Maybe that’s why Drake and Todd get along so well, in their own way, Damian thinks. Because they know the edge of everything and nothing and it’s too loud, always too loud in their heads.)

Dick shouts from upstairs for Alfred, and the butler, reluctant to leave, levels his eyes with Damian’s.

But Damian squares his shoulders, lifts his chin, and glares back, trying to convey everything he can never bring himself to say out loud.

_“You can trust me.”_

_“There are more important things right now.”_

_“I can handle this.”_

_“I can’t handle this.”_

_“What more must I do, for all of you to understand how much I long to be part of this family?”_

_“No one asked me if I wanted to be born, but I was, and now you have to take responsibility for your actions. Your mistakes.”_

_“I’ve worked so hard already to prove myself, what is left for me to_ do _?”_

_How do I fix these broken things when my hands are so small?_

_How do I get Father to accept me how do I get Mother to look at me how do I keep my brothers from hating me how do I stop feeling so angry and lonely and sad and scared how do I stop feeling Ican’tIcan’tICAN’T BUT TELL ME HOW_

_Before I break, just like. Just like Timothy._

Tim’s screams are so loud, and Damian wants to put his hands over his ears so he does, but he can still hear it. It’s not until the cries crescendo and settle into a low, aching bass at the base of his skull that Damian realizes Tim had already stopped screaming and all the noise,  _it’s inside of **me**_.

Alfred watches him, scrutinizing every twitch of muscle, until Damian nods, quelling the storm within. The butler gives him a heavy, meaningful look because he knows, he does, just how hard Damian has been trying, and struggling.

Because all of the manor’s walls are his eyes and ears, and he’s too learned in this profession to not know what a sob sounds like, muffled against an arm or a pillow, or swallowed back down. And he knows just how much to push and just how much space to give.

And right now, Damian needs all of those things, and more.

Even with everything he’s trying to suppress, the weight of the world, Damian doesn’t back down.

_(He doesn’t know how to, but sometimes he wishes someone had taught him)._

And finally, after an eternity, Alfred leaves to find Dick, who hasn’t stopped calling since. Leaving the two youngest Robins ( _“ex-Robin, you took that away from me, too, didn’t you?”_ ) alone in their father’s sanctuary. His tomb. Their home.

Damian wants to scream because they forget he is only ten years old, they forget that he is only a boy in a world of men and monsters and broken things (broken boys, dying birds).

_“Tim, stop. Please, you have to stop.”_

_“But the pressure, so much pressure, all building up and if I don’t, I’ll blow and—”_

“Tim.”

The crying and screaming and scratching stop, and Tim’s whole body stills, almost relaxes but not quite.

“ _Tim_.”

Tim looks somewhere past Damian’s shoulder, at the cave’s entrance where the Batmobile always leaves and returns. Where the bats fly out at dusk and return just before dawn.

But Damian closes his eyes against this, the world this family has carved out for itself.

He can’t bear to know what this does to Timothy, and he won’t acknowledge what he’s doing to himself. When he makes his voice sound like  _this_.

Because he’s only a boy and they’re only human and he never got to play pretend as a child anyway. At least, not outside of his head.

“Tim.”

Because maybe, just maybe, if he pretends hard enough, Tim will think it’s true. And if Tim believes it’s true, Damian will, too. And maybe that is all it will take for it to become reality.

“….Bruce?”

“I’m here.”

He gathers Tim into his arms and thankfully, the older boy doesn’t say anything about how small he is and how big he is not.


End file.
